Eminian: Rivermen part of SPHL pipeline to ECHL

The roster challenges continue for the Peoria Rivermen, although they are certainly not alone in the SPHL.

Peoria has lost its top two forwards now to ECHL call-ups. In the SPHL, it is not just a challenge to build a team, it's as big a challenge to maintain what you have.

Peoria winger Tyler Fernandez has three goals, including a game-winner, and a +6 rating in six games so far on his call-up with ECHL Wheeling. Buh bye, Peoria.

Garrett Vermeersch is gone, too, so the high-end players on the Rivermen roster are starting to earn next-level chances.

The SPHL appears to be emerging in the minor-league player development pipeline as the class-A level feeder to the class-AA ECHL.

Since the SPHL season opened on Oct. 25, there have been 13 players called-up to the next level.

Of those, 12 have gone up to ECHL teams, including two each to Florida, Evansville and Fort Wayne.

Only one player has gone up to the CHL, which operates above the SPHL level but is below the ECHL in quality.

The SPHL teams hit hardest by call-ups? Pensacola has lost 4 — including two-thirds of its No. 1 line in Mitchell Good and Joe Caveney. Bloomington has lost four players, and Peoria and Louisiana two each.

SHOW MUST GO ON? So Greg Pankewicz is replacing Brian Gratz as Bloomington head coach, with a presser scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Gratz resigned last week — he likely would have received a lengthy suspension from the SPHL if he'd stayed — after he led a deplorable circus in a loss to the Rivermen in a Nov. 30 game that included 180 penalty minutes.

Bloomington's search didn't last long. The team settled internally on Pankewicz before the weekend. He inherits a team that has decent skill overshadowed by the previous regime's philosophy that led them to be the SPHL's most-penalized team.

It remains to be seen if Bloomington will attempt to play the game, or stick with the clown show, but know this: Pankewicz is no wallflower, he was more than able to do both as a player.

He played 1,104 games in an 18-year pro career and finished 12th on minor-league hockey's all-time penalty minutes list while also scoring more than 500 goals.

During his career, the gifted goal scorer also logged more than 200 penalty minutes in 10 different seasons — more than 300 three times — and had 125 fights.

His lone NHL fight was against Kevin Kaminski — now head coach at SPHL Louisiana.

And there's that striptease, of course. Pankewicz, upset with officials while serving as an assistant coach with then-CHL Colorado, hurled shoes, tie, coat, shirt, undershirt onto the ice and stood on the bench, stripped down to his waist, in a February game during the 2010-11 season.

The video of those antics went viral. You can see it via my blog, Cleve's World, at pjstar.com.

SURGING FOR CENTRAL ILLINOIS: The Peoria Rivermen and Mississippi Surge have not yet met on the ice.

But the Surge, based in Biloxi, Miss., will make a stop in Peoria to offer a helping hand to Washington, East Peoria and Pekin folks hit by the November storm.

The SPHL team has been gathering donations of items from its fanbase to help the tornado victims in central Illinois.

The Surge are playing a three-game series against Bloomington, at U.S. Cellular Coliseum this weekend.

They are loading new clothes, paper products, blankets, cleaning products water and cash donations into a trailer and towing it with the team bus up to central Illinois. The Surge plan to stop at Carver Arena on their way to Bloomington and drop off the trailer.

Biloxi knows all about storm damage. It was hammered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In fact, the Holiday Inn the Rivermen regularly stayed at, near the beach, on ECHL-era road trips, was wiped out.

Want to thank the Surge and boo the Thunder? You can accomplish both by showing up for those games this weekend over in Bloomington.

RIVER READINGS: The Rivermen Boosters Club has done great work supporting the new SPHL team. And among its projects in November was a fundraising effort for the Washington and Pekin tornado vicitims. It produced $850. Stick taps to the group. ... There is a growing group of Rivermen fans on facebook who have put together a nice page called the Wheelhouse Gang. You can check them out at www.facebook/wheelhousegang. ... Rivermen assistant captain and Pekin native Cole Ruwe has recruited a few of his teammates to join him in a fundraising event for a Pekin Squirt youth hockey team on Thursday. The 5 p.m. dinner will feature Ruwe and his teammates working as wait staff. Any tips generated will be donated to the youth hockey team. The dinner is at Yesterday's Bar & Grill (363 Court St., Pekin). ... The Rivermen are in a stretch where they have 12 days off — that's the longest idle time in their history — and resume action with a three-game series against Bloomington on Dec. 20-22.

Dave Eminian covers the Rivermen for the Journal Star. Reach him at 686-3205 or deminian@pjstar.com. Check out his sports blog, Cleve's World, at pjstar.com and follow him on Twitter @icetimecleve.